Education

Trade Unions, Class and Power Online course

Starts Monday 28 January 2019

Registration from Monday 10 December 2018

Registered students will be given access to the course and its resources from 7 January 2019

This course is about trade unions, class and power. It looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the trade union movement in Britain today, how the experience of work is changing and how people can be won to become active trade unionists in current circumstances.

It examines exploitation, how all workers are exploited and what constitutes the working class. It stresses the importance of trade union activity but also argues that wider political mobilisation of working people as a class has in the past always been essential to secure structural advances.

It consider the circumstances in which such working class mobilisation has been able to achieve major victories. It then examines the nature of the state and of the ruling class. It stresses the limitations with which the ruling class has to work – looking at specific examples of concerted ruling class action and their success and failure.

It concludes by considering capitalist state power and counterposing it to the way the working class movement organises itself based on the development of solidarity.

The course is open to all. It draws on the experiences of those taking part at whatever level – whether starting out in a casualised workplace without trade unions or after a long career in the trade union movement.